A TEENAGE boy with a black eye will spearhead a police campaign to tackle the trade in stolen goods across the West Midlands.

Officers hope the pain that crime can have on its victims will help prick the consciences of those buying stolen goods on the cheap.

West Midlands Police said they wanted people who were offered a ‘too good to be true’ bargain to think carefully where the sat nav or mobile phone had come from.

The new hard-hitting poster campaign features the words ‘Think about where it came from’ above a picture of a mobile phone passing hands for a few £5 notes.

Beneath the main picture is a photo of a teenage robbery victim with a badly-swollen black eye and the words: “The painful truth behind buying stolen goods – someone always pays.”

More than 9,000 of the posters produced by the Safer Birmingham Partnership are going up in around the city to deter people from fuelling the handlers’ trade. Chief Supt Gareth Morgan said: “We want people who are offered items they believe to be stolen to think how they would feel if it was their son or daughter who had been robbed.

“Behind every apparent bargain is a victim. It might be someone from your family – the people who steal items to sell like this are indiscriminate.

“Crime continues to fall across the city but we cannot be complacent.

“We intend to focus on the criminals who support the trade in stolen goods.

“By handling stolen goods they are directly responsible for the injuries suffered by children like the one in our poster.”

The poster campaign will be launched today by all Birmingham’s Operational Command Units and will go up in pubs, betting shops and supermarkets.

Dan Gibbin, of the Safer Birmingham Partnership, said: “By shifting the emphasis onto the human cost of incidents that lead to handling, we are hoping to make people think twice about buying. They might think twice about the plight of its owner.”